HKU Annual Report 2022

TEACHING AND LEARNING 23 22 HKU ANNUAL REPORT 2022 One of the biggest challenges teachers have faced during the pandemic is how to make hybrid learning work – those sessions when in-person and online students attend class at the same time. Professor Susan Bridges and her colleagues at the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning have examined the problem from all angles to produce a model that is attracting global attention and HKU teachers have been honoured internationally for their excellence and innovation, winning two Gold awards and one Bronze at the 2021 QS Reimagine Education Awards (the ‘Oscars’ of education) and the C Holmes MacDonald Outstanding Teaching Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN). MAKING HYBRID LEARNING WORK TEACHING EXCELLENCE HONOURS The CETL Learning Lab was launched in May 2022 to support innovation, including addressing the post-pandemic demand for synchronous hybrid learning. Dr George Lim Tipoe and Dr Fraide A Ganotice Jr of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine won a Gold award in hybrid learning for their teamwork on interprofessional education and collaborative practice. Students from 12 health-related programmes in six faculties come together to learn about, from and with one another, and deepen their understanding of each other’s disciplines, with their discussions facilitated by Open edX and learning analytics. More than 40 teachers are involved in the project. Dr Ng Ming Yen of the Department of Diagnostic Radiology won the Gold award for life sciences for a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on cardiac imaging that is the first of its kind to provide a postgraduate certificate in cardiac CT and MRI. The MOOC was developed with input from a large team of international and Hong Kong experts and HKU’s Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative. The Bronze award went to Mr Mathew Pryor and Ms Lynn Lin Hanyuning in the Faculty of Architecture in the category of ICT tools in teaching, learning and support for their Digital Exhibition Space, which makes creative use of 3D virtual technologies for students to learn and display their works. The IEEE-HKN award went to Dr Hayden So Kwok Hay in the Faculty of Engineering for his excellence in training and motivating future engineers. Dr So involves students in hands-on projects from the outset then guides them back to the underlying theories. His teaching has inspired several students to launch their own start-ups. The IEEE’s honour society, Eta Kappa Nu, honours only one professor globally each year. Dr So is the first scholar outside the US to receive the award. A promising new model for hybrid learning has been developed at HKU, while several of our teachers were honoured for bringing innovative approaches into their classrooms. EXPERIMENTS IN LEARNING we have designed this space ourselves and patented the Hybrid Learning Mobile Desk Console in the HKSAR and Mainland China, and we believe it can achieve our learning goals. This is the most advanced hybrid teaching space on campus,” said Professor Bridges. The console puts online learners at the centre of group discussions, using hexagonal tables with two back-to-back computer screens at their centre and a 360-degree camera. Online students can see all their in-person groupmates at the same time and vice versa, and both groups can look at the same computer screen at the same time. Their work can also be projected onto a giant digital canvas that wraps around the room, for feedback from teachers and classmates. Online students can also be projected onto the canvas to contribute to whole-class discussion. The Learning Lab has been presented to educators in Hong Kong, Europe and Australia to much interest. “People have never seen this kind of space before. I believe the future of teaching and learning is hybrid,” Professor Bridges said – particularly in connecting students and teachers in different campuses and countries. QS Reimagine Education Gold award IEEE-HKN award QS Reimagine Education Gold award QS Reimagine Education Bronze award is on display at the Learning Lab, a new professional development space where teachers can experiment with the future of learning. “We were given a brief two years ago to predict what classes would look like when face-to-face learning resumed and to draw out the best lessons from arrangements during COVID-19. Hybrid was the hardest to crack but Learn more about the CETL Learning Lab

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